Mick Jagger turned 70 today.
I’ve been listening to a fair bit of early Rolling Stones music since posting a couple of weeks ago about the band’s brief stay at the Manger Town and Country Motor Lodge here in Savannah and their performance at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro.
Back in the mid-1960s, The Rolling Stones were covering a lot of R&B songs — their early originals are very much in that tradition. This is a whole different band than the one I came to know — and love — as a kid in the 70s and 80s.
The Stones’ early work is interesting for all sorts of interesting reasons — from the history of rock and roll to the peculiar racial and cultural dynamics in the U.S. at the time.
So here are some YouTube videos with Stones songs and performances that helped catapult the band to fame, even if they aren’t the songs that we most remember.
Check out the squealing girls and inane interview just before this cover of Willie Dixon’s “Little Red Rooster”:
And here’s “Little Red Rooster” from some TV show (I honestly can’t figure out which one):
Here’s some great video along with the album recording of “Under the Boardwalk”. The video doesn’t match the audio, and I’m not quite sure what’s going on with this at all. But here you go:
Rolling Stones – Under the Boardwalk 1965 – MyVideo
“Good Times, Bad Times”:
Here they are on Mike Douglas, first with Chuck Berry’s “Carol”, then “Tell Me You’re Coming Back to Me”, some funny interview bits, then Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away” (Holly would only be 76, btw), and finally Willie Dixon’s “I Just Want to Make Love to You”, first recorded by Muddy Waters:
Here’s the T.A.M.I. Show (never heard of it) in 1964, with Chuck Berry’s “Reeling and Rocking”, a song I can’t even identify (help!), “Time Is On My Side”, Bobby and Shirley Womack’s “It’s All Over Now” first recorded by The Valentinos, and “I’m All Right”:
Some amazing stuff.